


Residuum

by Lacinia



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossover, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-11
Updated: 2013-04-11
Packaged: 2017-12-08 04:10:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/756883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lacinia/pseuds/Lacinia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A true daughter of the revolution, Tash stayed loyal even after it crumbled beneath her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Things Fall Apart

**Author's Note:**

> Clint and Natasha live through the Equalist revolution. With appearances by Lin Bei Fong.
> 
> Thanks for beta’ing go to Bees, who not only acted as a sounding board during the entire writing process, but went ahead and encouraged this madness. 
> 
> A note on names: I generally used Chinese names for people from the Earth Kingdom and Japanese names for people from the Fire Nation. While LoK seems to imply that nation of origin/ethnicity is becoming less important than class/wealth, I suspect that it’s just becoming less overt, and this convention allowed me to touch on that idea. 
> 
> Natasha Romanov = Tash. The ‘shi’ syllable in Japanese is sometimes pronounced ‘sh,’ her name may be Tashi, a common Tibetan name meaning ‘good luck.’ Perhaps her parents borrowed it from their Air Nomads. 
> 
> Clint Barton = Rintaro (Rin) Bai Tian. If you have a suggestion for better a name that sounds like it fits in the universe but is still recognizably his, I would love to hear it, because re-naming him was the most frustrating thing in the entire writing experience. Seriously, I spent longer researching this than anything else.

The knots are tight; the ropes hold his arms to his chest and his ankles together.  With his mouth stuffed with cloth, he can’t even yell for help.  He thrashes like a beached fish, before finally falling still, exhausted.  

He’d rather fight; he doesn’t like the sensation of being choked by memory. 

 

 

_“I haven’t seen you around here before,” he says.  He comes here often, he’s sure he would remember her face._

_“I’m new,” she answers._

_“Well,” he says, and raises his cup of tea, “to many future meetings.”_

The car takes a hard turn, and Rintaro rolls into the wall. 

_“This isn’t what I ordered,” he says when she sets the plate down in front of him._

_“No,” she answers.  “The chef made it special for you.”_

_He looks up at her.  “Now why would he do that?” he asks, smiling._

_She sits down across the table from him.  “We value repeat customers,” she says, and takes the chopsticks from his hand to steal one of his dumplings._

The car comes to a stop, and Rintaro wonders what, exactly, is going to happen to him.

 

 

_“So I think we should, um, date sometime,” he bursts out, unwontedly awkward._

_She smiles at him.  “Took you long enough.”_

The doors open, and Tash peers down at him.  She must have changed while Rintaro was unconscious; she’s now wearing an unfamiliar uniform, brown and forest green.  There’s a gauntlet on her right hand, a baton on her hip.

He’s read the reports, he knows this is how the Equalist soldiers dress.  At least that explains some things.

 

 

_“Isn’t this part of town a little dangerous?” he asks, when he sees where she lives.  The remainder of the thought, ‘for a young woman alone,’ hangs in the air, unspoken._

_Tash’s eyes slide away from him, like this conversation is boring.  “People look out for each other here,” she says, voice light.  “I always feel safe.”_

_Rintaro’s forehead crinkles.  “It’s Triad territory,” he says._

_“I stay out of their way,” she lies._

 

 

In his armor, he’s far too heavy for her to move by himself, so she calls over a tall man, also wearing an Equalist uniform.  His face is completely covered, except for the mouth and chin, by a dark mask and green goggles.  He’s so shut-off, so inaccessible, Rintaro might as well appeal to a statue. 

Tash isn’t wearing a mask, so Rintaro can catch her gaze, show her his hurt, confusion, and rage.  But her eyes are cool; her face reflects nothing at all. 

 

  

_“I feel like I never know what you’re thinking,” he tells her._

_She seems unsure about how to respond.  “So try asking me,” she says finally._

The man drags him out of the back of the car, and Rintaro hits the ground with a thump, his armor clattering against the stone.  The man and Tash each grab one of Rintaro’s elbows and pull him down a hall, through a door, and up a few steps. 

The light here is blinding, after the dark.  He blinks down at dozens of people, all dressed in that Equalist uniform, all masked and goggled, and realizes he’s on a stage.  Tash and the man push him to his knees, but hold tight to his shoulders.  His hands are still bound, but they flex uselessly.  It’s not in his nature to go down without a fight. 

A man stands in front of him, but facing away, towards the crowd.  He’s shorter and broader-shouldered than the man that brought him here.  Average.  “For years we have prepared,” he says, voice loud and clear.  “We have trained, and we have gathered.  We have spread our message across the unified kingdoms.  And today, finally, after all our hard work and preparation, we strike at our greatest enemy.  Today we attack the ultimate example of bender oppression.”  He turns, and Rintaro stares, defiant, at the familiar white mask.  He’s seen it on a dozen pamplets and fliers distributed by Equalists.  “Now,” Amon says, “we go after the police.”

 

 

_“Is something bothering you?” he asks.  She looks like she’s biting her tongue._

_“Yes,” she says.  “The most government most people see is the police force.  You have all the authority, all the power.  And every single one of you is an Earthbender.  You don’t see a problem with that?”_

_“Not every police officer is an Earthbender,” he says, thinking about the Firebending arson investigators, the Waterbending river patrol, the non-bending traffic cops._

_“Yeah,” she says, and smiles apologetically, but there’s something funny about it.  “I’m overreacting.”_

 

  

Amon walks towards him, and Rintaro is not afraid.  He is not afraid.  He is a decorated officer of the Metalbending Police Force, the elite team personally led by Chief Bei Fong, and he is not afraid of one man.  He will not make them hold him still, he would stand upright if strong hands didn’t force him down.  He will face his fate with dignity.

Rintaro is brave, and Amon puts a hand to his forehead and—

 

 

_“Can you imagine a world,” Tash asks, “where we are born the same?  Where the whole course of our lives—whether we will be weak or powerful, victims or fighters—rests not on what we are, but who?”_

_“What are you saying?” he asks._

_“I believe in equality,” she says.  “I believe in a better world.  How can you benders be so selfish as to take that away from us?”_

_Rintaro is still staring at her dumbfounded when she stands up from the table and kicks him solidly in the gut._

_His armor protects him from much of the force of the blow, but he barely avoids falling to the ground.  Automatically, he unspools the cables and sends them flying towards her, but instead of neatly netting her they tear through a bamboo and rice paper screen when she darts away, swift as a squirrel-cat._

_He stamps a foot down to shake the ground under her feet, and she vaults over the table and hits his arm at the shoulder, paralyzing it.  She spins away again, her red skirt swirling, and he sweeps his other arm, causing the ceramic plates to fly off the table towards her.  She ducks under most of them, but gets winged by the elegantly painted platter that had held the little jam filled pastries he’d brought from the bakery around the corner.  It doesn’t slow her overly; she rolls towards him and punches the side of his right knee._

_He falls to his knees, but raises his left hand, and a flowerpot flies from her windowsill.  She flattens to the ground to dodge it, then jumps up and takes a step past him to deliver a sharp, backwards kick with her heel to the base of his spine: the Earth chakra._

_He tries to catch her again with the cables, but they don’t move at all._

_“Tash,” he says, and it comes out choked._

_With her hands in the crane position, she jabs swiftly.  One, two, shoulder and heart, and his remaining arm is paralyzed and he falls to the ground.  He can’t get up._

_She stands and goes into the kitchen.  Rintaro can hear the rattle of a drawer opening.  She kneels down, puts her hand on his face.  “You’re a good man, Rintaro,” she says.  “When you are one of us, I think you will understand.”_

_Then she takes the gauntlet she brought and electrocutes him until he loses consciousness._


	2. Aftermath

Rintaro wakes up at the station. “What happened to you?” Chief Bei Fong asks in hard voice. 

“What do you think,” he says. They’ve all heard the rumors, and the Chief has a look in her eye like she knows that they’re true. Rintaro doesn’t waste either of their time with her useless sympathy, he just wordlessly hands over his badge.

The next morning there’s a picture of him on the front page of The Daily Republic City Post: he’s propped upright on the statue of Toph Bei Fong in front of the station, a sign hanging from his neck reading “Equality Begins Now.” He wishes Tash’s handwriting weren’t so familiar.

Rintaro is briefly famous, until Amon attacks the Triads and the media has a better example of how powerful the Equalists are. He mostly spends this time sitting in the room he rents above a spice shop, meditating and trying very hard not to think. He writes a letter to his parents, telling them he has left the police force. He doesn’t give a reason; but they probably have heard, anyways. Even so, even if they would look at him the way everyone else does (with pity in their eyes, and fear in their faces), he considers going back to the farm. They’d be glad to have his hands, even if he couldn’t help plow like he used to. But Republic City has been his home for over a decade; he realizes he could never leave.

His parents were so glad when he turned out to be an Earthbender. (His older brother wasn’t so lucky, and always resented Rintaro for being the favored son.) He inherited it through his father, who had clapped him on the back the first time he levitated a pebble. “An Earthbender will always have work,” he’d said, and had Rintaro study Earthbending from the teacher at the school and metalbending from the blacksmith. While other children played Rintaro had practiced, and when he was fifteen he left home and traveled to the city to enter the Academy. 

A good Earthbender, as long as he is not a thief, or lazy, or incompetent, will always have a place with the police force Toph Bei Fong built. 

Rintaro thinks that time is hard, when he tries to remember what it is to not be a cop, when he tries to learn what it is to not be an Earthbender. The coming weeks are harder.

Equalists attack the arena. They injure Chief Bei Fong. They take the city.

Rintaro thinks he sees Tash once, in those awful weeks. He’s trudging home, trying to pretend he was never a cop, never an Earthbender. It’s a brand new world, and Rintaro has no power. A patrolling Equalist soldier cocks her head at him, and Rintaro can’t be certain, because of the mask, but he thinks it’s her. The body shape is right. The intensity when they lock eyes is right. But Rintaro breaks the gaze, keeps walking, tries to pretend he’s wrong, or that it doesn’t mean anything.

Or that he doesn’t miss her. 

 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

This, Rintaro thinks, is the end of their story. He was the pawn, the sap, the fool who got played and couldn’t move on, who had the delusion that he had something more than a single, devastating lie.

Tash won, and he is wrecked. The Equalists won and Rintaro lost everything.

But fortune is a faithless bitch, and all that changes in a single, sun-drenched afternoon.

Amon is a liar, it turns out. The Avatar comes back to the city and takes from him the heart of the people. The United Fleet arrives and arrests Equalists in droves. 

It should be a happy ending, but Amon is fled, not gone, and Rintaro’s power is still bound. He’s limited to the strength of his body, the perception of his eyes and ears. It’s not enough, can never be enough, but Rintaro earns a living loading crates at the docks. He moves into smaller, shabbier quarters, buys a bicycle now that he can no longer afford the trolleys. He counts his coins, eats plain rice twice a day, and even so watches his savings dwindle.

He makes friends with the other dockworkers, shares with them cups of weak tea and stories of days gone by. 

Rintaro thinks he can make a new life out of this, thinks, in time, he can accustom himself to the loss of the power which has been the driving force of his entire life.

And then the Avatar comes back, wielding not only Air, but also Water, Fire, and Earth.

And come the words that will alter the rest of Rintaro’s life: “The Avatar has returned from the North Pole having journeyed into the Spirit World and gained the ability to restore the powers of benders attacked by Amon! All benders should report to Air Temple Island at dawn…” and Rintaro can’t comprehend the rest, just hears the dim murmur of the radio announcer’s voice. He can feel everyone staring at him, but he doesn’t see, caught in the rush of _possibility_.

The city is filled with men and women desperate for the return of their power. The lines wind around the entirety of Air Temple Island, and every day, long before sundown, dozens are turned away when the Avatar is too exhausted to continue.

When he finally makes it to the front of that line, Rintaro’s heart beats like a frog-sparrow’s. He kneels before her, and looks up with wide eyes. But when she puts her hand on his forehead it doesn’t feel like what Amon did. 

Her eyes pour white light, warm on his skin. She touches him, and Rintaro feels for a moment connected to everything through the towering mountain of her power.

She touches him, and Rintaro feels a wall he hadn’t noticed crumble into dust.

Power wakes in him, uncurling from his chest to fill every ounce of his body. He feels the knowledge, deep in his bones, that he can reshape this world, twist it. Call on the Earth and have it answer back.

His perception stretches out—he can feels waves beat on the shore, he can feel the foundations of the buildings. He smiles; canines showing, viciously glad. This is the way things are supposed to be. 

Rintaro puts on his armor and it’s like coming home. Rintaro throws out an arm and a cable whips out. He’s back and he feels strong, and he feels right, and he is not even guilty over how much he despised being ordinary.

When he walks back into the station, everyone spontaneously applauds, and Rintaro realizes how much he’s missed these people. 

The Chief shakes his hand, but undercuts the sentimentality by saying, “Now get back to work.”


	3. Soldiering On

Three weeks after the Avatar defeats Amon at the harbor and single-handedly destroys everything Tash worked for years to build, she buys vegetables at the Water Lily street market. She walks down Fast River Street, against the flow of most of the foot traffic. The shopkeepers and government workers are all heading home for the night, but she weaves through them with the easy grace of a city native. 

An old woman spits at her as she walks past. “Fire Nation invader!” she calls.

“Part right,” Tash says, slipping the scarf from her auburn hair as she walks past. It’s the rare, reddish-brown hue found only in the Earth Kingdom. Tash inherited it from her mother: her amber eyes and pale skin come from her father’s Fire Nation blood. 

Someone catches her elbow. Tash spins, fist at ready, but it’s only a young woman with a round-face and brilliant green eyes. She’s holding an infant cradled in one arm, and the unexpected harmlessness of her makes Tash open her hand and drop it in shame. “I’m so sorry!” the woman says. “My mother-in-law is confused. She grew up during the war.”

Tash studies her coolly. “It is no trouble,” she says, and walks on. 

After she passes the Council building she turns east, then ducks into an alley a few blocks later, where she opens a grate and hops down the exposed hole. She passes down a narrow tunnel and reaches the place that has been her home since the revolution crumbled into dust. It’s a little cave just big enough for her sleeping mat, a small fire, and a few meager belongings.

Tash no longer has any contact with her fellow revolutionaries. Those that were not arrested in the chaos after the revelation of Amon’s treachery have abandoned the movement, and for that Tash will never forgive them. “So he was just another bender trying to rule over us,” Tash argued, “Does that mean we were wrong? Does that mean that we should give up trying to make the world a better place?” Her words were met with angry shrugs and bitter words. Betrayal, it seems, is hard for people to swallow. 

She tried to remain calm, but she hadn’t—and still doesn’t—understand why they turned their backs on everything they believed in, everything they built. Are they so cowardly, so treacherous, of so little conviction that the loss of their leader can make them abandon the cause they pledged their lives to?

Tash would have stayed loyal until the day she died, but one day there was nothing left to stay loyal to. 

Tash stays curled in her cave, all alone, and cooks lotus root for her dinner. The recipe is one of the few Earth Kingdom traditions her mother passed down to her. She made it for Rintaro, once. 

Rintaro, who had warm brown eyes and an easy sense of belonging. 

This is what she remembers about Rintaro: he was such a better man than she thought he would be. She saw him once stop in the middle of a patrol to rescue a ball a little girl had lost to the river. He did the gardening for his neighbor, an old man with no sons or daughters. He was brash and smug and thoughtless, but he could also be breathtakingly kind. He really wanted to help people. He honestly thought he was helping people.

Mostly he helped Tash. Through Rintaro, Tash learned about how many officers worked at his station, about where the lines of the precinct were drawn. She learned when the shifts changed, and how Chief Bei Fong was likely to respond to a threat. 

She allows herself to dwell only for a few maudlin seconds before she places the past aside. She goes over the plan in her mind, one last time, but she can see no gleaming flaws. She sleeps as well as she can, and when the bell tolls for midnight Tash takes the jar of red paint she had tucked beside her pillow and exits her hidey-hole, heading towards downtown. 

 

\---------------------------------------------------------------

 

The morning is warm, and the sun hits Rintaro right in the eyes as he looks up at the words. They’re almost twice his height, scrawled in paint the color of blood on the clean, white walls of the Rising Sun Bank. The building is on one of the busiest streets in the city, and already, hours before noon, hundreds of people have seen the slogan.

“‘The Revolution Lives,’” Officer Wei reads. “Guess this means they’re back,” he says, a frown on his face.

There have been several such acts of vandalism in the past week: big, ambitious, and all intended to spread the message of Equality. 

“I’m thinking they never left,” Rintaro says slowly. The insurrection has now truly failed—these words are not truth, they are delusion. To keep fighting now, so hopelessly, indicates a motivation that is pure belief, untainted by greed or desire for power. They must place their cause above all else.

Rintaro has seen that kind of belief, seen it shining out of the eyes of a woman as she told him someday they would be on the same side. 

It’s just a feeling, not even a hunch, so he doesn’t have to do anything about it, until their vandal hits the port, and someone remembers a woman with reddish hair and sharp eyes. The investigation gains speed, and more witnesses are found, and Tash’s face is printed on posters that are plastered across the city. Rintaro watches these developments with worried eyes, but they don’t find her.

The posters grow tattered, the ink runs in the rain, and they still don’t find her.

It’s a frustration, and an embarrassment to the police force, and finally…

“I want this girl made a priority,” the Chief tells the room of gathered officers. “Let’s quash this damn revolution for once and for all.” Then she looks at Rintaro. “My office,” she says.

Rintaro goes with trepidation, worried he’s about to be verbally thrashed. So it’s unexpected when she sits down and talks to him as gentle as she gets. “Kid, I have a feeling you know more than you’re letting on about this girl.”

Rintaro glances away. He’s not the best at hiding his feelings at the best of times, and the Chief was a hell of a detective before she was put in charge of the entire force. No surprise, really, that she’s noticed he’s out of sorts.

Rintaro shrugs a shoulder awkwardly. “She’s the one that took me to Amon,” he says, when it become clear he can’t get away with not saying anything.

“Is that all?” the Chief asks, holding his gaze coolly. 

“Before that I was kind of thinking about marrying her?” he says. “It won’t be a problem,” he assures her. 

“Hmm,” she says, like she doesn’t believe him at all. “You’re one of my best officers, Bai Tian.”

“Thank you, Chief,” he says, cautiously.

“But you’ve been off your game lately. Distracted. I’m not sure I’d like you at my back now, because I don’t know where your head is.”

He feels the air chill in his lungs. “It’s right here,” he says. “You can trust me,” he says. 

She must hear his plaintive note, his shred of desperation. Rintaro didn’t lose and regain everything just for it to be endangered by a question of loyalty. “Prove it,” she says, voice hard.

Rintaro looks at her and realizes he can no longer hover between two selves—the Rintaro who was (is) in love with Tash, and the one whose duty it is to catch her.

He must find balance: this is key to all things. Earthbending requires a stable stance, and an unsettled heart: such turmoil will only bring ill. 

Choose, the world says, and Rintaro chooses. With only a shadow of regret. 

“Will do, boss,” he promises. 

He leaves her office, heading straight towards Detective Narita, who’s in charge of the vandalism cases. “The girl you’re looking for,” he says, “she’s a true believer. She’s going to go after symbols. She still thinks she can still convince the people to follow her.”

“That’s what I thought,” he says. “But how come you sound so sure?” 

“Your vandal, I knew her. Sometimes I think I knew her better than anyone,” he answers. Because Tash must have pretended to a lot of people that she was harmless, but she showed Rintaro her teeth. Because Tash must hide all her weaknesses from her fellow Equalists, but she showed Rintaro she could laugh. “You ever feel that way about somebody, even if it’s not true?”

“Not about a criminal I’ve been chasing,” Narita says slowly, watching Rintaro carefully. 

“Well,” Rintaro says, and shrugs. “Nobody says you have to listen to my advice.”

But that night, while he sits in his empty apartment by the canal, he thinks on what he has not said. He, and perhaps he alone, is capable of predicting Tash’s next targets. 

Tash was careful while undercover, but perhaps not quite careful enough. Because a handful of times she let her politics show, and if Rintaro did not quite suspect her (too distracted by the swift, sweet agony of falling in love) in retrospect, he understands these were the situations that most angered her. These things maddened her, so much that they made her forget sensible silence and speak.

She had complained that there were no non-benders on the Council, she’d expressed annoyance that the police force offered combat training only to Earthbenders, and she had been visibly bothered when a fishing captain told them he inherited the family business over his brother solely because of his Waterbending.

Rintaro counts on his fingers, comes up with one inescapable conclusion: sooner or later, Tash will write a message on the rough stone walls of the police department’s training facility on the outskirts of the city. 

He passes the info along to Narita. The funny thing is, it doesn’t even feel like a betrayal. He knows she wouldn’t expect anything less from him: they both chose their paths long ago.

Tash believes in integrity, in standing behind your beliefs, in not letting feelings stand in the way of duty. Tash would have done the same as him, were their places reversed, only sooner, probably. In her own battle between her affections and her duty her choice had been clear, and she had made it without regrets, without wavering. That is a kind of strength Rintaro does not have, to put his heart in a different box from that which he knows he must do. He is not sure he would want it.

Rintaro’s way is this: do, but because, not in spite of, your feelings. The Chief asked him to choose between love and duty and Rintaro chose both: full-hearted obligation. He can catch her, and still care for her. 

Rintaro spends five nights watching the training facility: five long and boring nights, with only four other officers for company. They wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for the Chief, who stepped in when Narita would have disregarded Rintaro’s information, suspicious of its source. 

The story spread: the precinct is staffed by gossips and fools, because now they look at Rintaro with questions in their eyes. They whisper behind his back. 

They doubt him, but the fifth night is unseasonably warm, and despite this a woman approaches the building wrapped in a long coat, with a scarf over her head.

Rintaro perks up immediately, and raises a hand to signal his fellow officers.

She takes one step. Two.

Rintaro has spent months remembering every second of his brief, incandescent life with Tash.

He’s sure.

“Go!” he shouts, and five of the very best the Republic City Police Department has to offer rush her.

Tash shrugs off her coat in a single smooth motion and drops the jar she’d been carrying. It crashes to the ground, splattering red paint everywhere, but no one pays it the least bit of attention. 

Tash spins into a flying kick that knocks Hidako to the ground. A series of quick jabs makes Xu fall to the ground, thrashing, but Rintaro, Bao, and Lian all let their cables fly simultaneously, and she doesn’t quite dodge them all. The fight is short after that, although Bao gets an elbow to the eye when he gets too close too soon. 

It isn’t long before she’s cocooned, helpless. 

After she’s been loaded into the back of the truck, Rintaro comes in and sits down across from her. Something about this makes Tash laugh, despite her restraints and the bruise forming across her face. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” she says.

“You should have known I would catch you,” he tells her.

“So you came here to gloat,” she says. “Congratulations, you caught me. You can celebrate your victory over the Equalists.” She seems to settle, as if contented that she’s discerned his motives. 

The truck starts moving with a lurch and Tash nearly falls, unable to balance with her arms and legs restrained. Rintaro automatically reaches over to steady her.

“That’s not why I’m here,” he says. “I’m here to tell you that I loved you. I never told you that but I should have.”

She stares at him like he’s crazy, which is possibly how he sounds. The prisoner transport truck is not usually a place for confessions of love. 

“I was doing my job,” she says finally. “You were always just my enemy.”

He looks at her steadily, without reacting. “Well,” he says, “anyways, I just thought I should tell you that.”

Neither of them says another word, and they roll bumpily on to the station.

His hand is still on her arm.


	4. Life Behind Walls

Because she doesn’t fight the charges, her trial is brief, a mere formality. In only a handful of days, she is shipped to the high-walled prison just outside the city. And it is there that, far more often than an arresting officer should, Rintaro comes to visit her. The first time it is with something between curiosity and duty, but he keeps coming because he believes, somehow, that what they were mattered. 

She thinks this is the height of foolishness. It is stupid, and sentimental, and what did she ever do to earn it? But she shows up when he visits, nonetheless.

He comes straight off his shift, still in his armor, and talks to her of inconsequential things, like the fact that the restaurant she used to work at has closed and that a famous Fire Nation musician is giving concerts a concert at the arena. A public garden is being built in the Phoenix Hill borough—a beautiful neighborhood filled with large, elegant houses. Neither of them could ever afford to live there, but he says that someday he’d like to visit the garden.

For her part of the conversation, she argues for Equality. “I wasn’t wrong,” she says during one of their meetings. “People like you do have all the power, and it isn’t fair.”

“Maybe you should move on,” he suggests. The rest of the city has. 

“Maybe you should open your eyes, Rin, and tell me there wasn’t a reason for us to fight,” she counters, and refuses to back down, until Rintaro finally changes the subject, weary around his eyes.

During one visit he tells her about his childhood, and ends up saying more than he means to. That often happens with Tash, there’s something very compelling about her full attention. When he finishes his story, she looks at him for a moment, considering. 

“What would you be, if you hadn’t been born a bender?” Tash asks. She thinks, or maybe just likes to think, that he would have fought with her.

Rintaro thinks of his brother, simmering with rage, trapped in a village that he thinks is too small for him. “What would you be, if you had?” he asks instead. He’s tired of Tash’s attempts to convince him that the way he is is wrong, or something, just because he was born lucky.

Tash leans back in her chair. “Well, I probably would have been so secure in my position, so comfortable in my way of life that I never would have had the courage to try to change the world.”

Rintaro stands up, stalks halfway to the door before deciding to stay. “I am not your enemy,” he says, voice tight. Why can’t she understand that he’s one of the few friends she has?

“Everyone who refuses to acknowledge their contribution to the system is an enemy. Everyone who opposes justice is someone who must be fought.”

“Is that what you put in your pamphlets?” he asks. “Is that what you told all those people, to get them to fight against their friends and neighbors?”

“You want to know the truth?” she asks. “I didn’t need to say a thing. Ordinary people, willing to stand against the government, against the police, against the United Fleet itself. Do you think that kind of strength is created with words? It came from their hearts, Rintaro, because what they feel is real. Because what we do is right.”

Rintaro takes a breath, tries to reach for the calm mask that comes so easily to Tash. “You lost, and everyone stopped fighting. Doesn’t that make you think you were on the wrong side?” he asks.

“We didn’t lose,” she says. “It was not the kind of battle that could be lost. We were just delayed. In five years, ten, fifty, when the memory of Amon’s betrayal has faded people will look and they will see that they still are not equal. And the revolution will live again.” Her eyes grow bright with hope, and Rintaro suppresses the urge to shiver. 

 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

There are many Equalists in the prison, but most of the other chi-blockers are in the men’s wing. 

An exception is Jun Qiao, who trained with her in the years before the revolution came out into the open. The two of them didn’t much like each other back then: conflicts of personality. Jun fights skillfully, but without forethought. A single well-placed blow, Tash has told her a dozen times, is worth more than ten sloppy ones. This is the underpinning philosophy of their art, but Jun completely fails to apply it outside of a fight. Secrecy irritated Jun, she considered anything besides a fight a waste of her time. She looked down at Tash, who spent weeks slowly gathering vital information by tiny increments.

In prison, though, they find themselves surrounded with criminals who, although diverse, are essentially, unambiguously, not Equalists. Not like them. As a result, Tash and Jun spend a not inconsequential amount of time together. They aren’t allowed to spar, but they can practice. If their exercises aren’t overtly deadly, and the guards on duty aren’t too twitchy, they can manage enough to keep them in fighting shape. 

It’s more than a matter of vanity. The rest of the Equalists (procurers of weapons, mechanics, and other assorted non-combatants essential to the revolution) rely on the chi-blockers to protect them from the prisoners opposed to Equality, many of whom are benders. Tash and Jun apply force when necessary. At other times, a mere demonstration of strength is enough. The very public practice sessions in the prison courtyard are thus doubly useful.

But practice without sparring does not quite keep the edge off Jun’s need for violence. Jun has grown very, very tired of being told when she eats, when she sleeps, when she gets to see the sky. It is not that imprisonment does not rankle on Tash, it is that she withstands it better. She understands that this is just another campaign to be withstood.

One day, the line for dinner is slower than usual, and Tash and Jun barely have a chance to sit down before the bell rings and the prisoners have to line up to be herded back to their cells. Jun doesn’t move, just takes a deep breath in an angry way and tightens her grip on her chopsticks. And that makes Tash, who’d already stood, give her a careful look. “Jun,” she says warningly, but before she can do anything more Min Li Tang, a guard who’s sister was Equalized, grabs Jun by the bicep and pulls her up. Instantly, Jun uses her free arm to deliver a punch that lays him out. 

Jun is reckless, and quick to anger. She can’t be trusted to keep her head, but there’s a reason she led one of the chi-blocker squads. Impulsive or not, she’s a hell of a fighter.

The cafeteria gets the kind of quiet that always preludes something bad. Tash takes a step back, not sure what Jun is about to do, or how she will be forced to respond. Loyalty is one thing, but no good will come of joining this fight.

The three other guards in the room rush Jun, and she doesn’t surrender as she should. She dodges the first attack with fluid ease, and redirects the second. One guard is hit in the throat and falls down choking. The second she paralyzes with a lightning-quick series of jabs to the spine and shoulders. But there are three guards in the cafeteria, and the last of them is a Firebender. 

 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

When Tash is finally allowed to visit her in the infirmary, Jun is, as expected, not dealing with her convalescence with grace, although the burn is healing well. “I could have used you back there,” she says. “Things might have gone differently if you had helped out.”

“You shouldn’t have fought back,” Tash tells her. “It only leads to trouble.”

“Time was you didn’t mind a little trouble,” Jun says. 

“The world has changed, Jun, we have to change with it, or else we die.”

“Changing is giving up,” Jun says. “Compromising is betraying. Why have we stopped fighting?”

“Now is not the time to fight,” Tash says. “You’ll be put in solitary for this, and your sentence might be extended. What good is that to the cause?” 

“It shows them that we are not cowed,” Jun says, voice low and vicious. “It shows them that they do not own us.”

“And of what use is that?” Tash asks again. “A warrior knows that every secret is an advantage.”

“And a single act of bravery is worth a thousand secrets,” Jun counters. 

“Bravery is choosing the harder path, I am told.”

Jun leans back into her bed with a tight smile. “You are very good with words for a soldier,” she says. “And this cause needs a new leader. Do you think you could be her?”

“I’m better in the background,” Tash says. That’s the complete truth; but it’s also something else: a bow out, a step aside. Jun is building herself up into the de facto Equalist leader in the women’s prison. It’s a title Tash has no interest in usurping, not least because she doesn’t know what Jun will do to hold onto it. 

 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

By the time the midsummer festival arrives Tash has been in prison for long months. Her and Rintaro’s visitation routine by now has the dependability of the tides, so it’s a surprise when Rintaro is forced to sit in the waiting room for nearly two hours, refused admittance for the first time. He’s tired and frustrated, by the time they’re let into the cramped visiting room.

Tash finds it stifling: too small, and with no windows. But the walls are stone, and Rintaro finds it reassuring. Womb-like. “What’s going on?” he asks her, when she’s led in by a guard, hands cuffed behind her. She’s never been restrained before. 

She waits until the guard leaves, locking the door behind him, before she speaks. “I’m not sure,” she says. “The guards are upset. We’ve been on lock-down the whole day.”

He bites his lip. That doesn’t bode well. He makes a mental note to ask around tomorrow, find out what exactly is going on. Tensions are high enough, he senses, that he’d be better off not asking the guards himself.

But he changes the subject, and gives her his standard update on the city, so that she can feel like she still lives there, isn’t exiled to some tiny, walled-in world. But it’s not as distracting as it should be, and finally he can’t stand to look at her retrained and twists his hand, unlocking the metal handcuffs.

“Thanks,” she says, and slips her hands out. She massages her wrists under the table. Their conversation is much more easy after this, and she even refers—in a deliberately casual way—to her childhood. It makes him smile. 

“I’ve got fifteen minutes left,” Rintaro protests, when the guard comes back early. It’s Jiang, who they both know passing well because he’s on shift nearly every time Rintaro visits. 

“Not today you don’t,” he answers. “You only got in at all because you’re a cop. Professional courtesy. Now,” he says, looking at Tash, “are you going to make this hard, or what?”

Tash holds up her hands. “I do endeavor to be helpful to my government,” she says, her voice is rich with irony. 

Jiang pulls her hands behind her back and locks them up. He grabs her by the elbow and pulls her up, twisting her shoulder in the process. Tash doesn’t make a noise, or anything so obvious, but her face tenses in pain before she smooths it. 

“Hey,” Rintaro says, standing up. “Cool it, she’s not fighting back.”

“She’s an Equalist,” he says back. “I know she’s a favorite of yours, but she’s dangerous.”

“Just watch it,” Rintaro says. 

“Rintaro,” Tash interjects. “I’ve got this.” But Jiang pushes Tash out the door and shuts it between them. (She fumes, flexes her wrists, but accepts the humiliation. What do chi-blockers do? They wait for the optimum moment.)

“No, you watch it,” Jiang says, striding towards Rintaro. “We just put down a full-blown prison riot in the other wing. Guess who led it? That would be your girl’s Equalist friends.”

“She’s not my girl,” Rintaro says slowly. He can’t think of a thing more ridiculous than reducing every complicated thing Tash is to him down to ‘girl.’

“That’s not what I see,” Jiang says. Jiang sees him here day after day, always for the same person.


	5. All Rise Up

The prison cools down after a couple of weeks, and their lives go back to what stands for normal behind these walls. But an undercurrent of tension remains. The Equalists face the hostility of the guards and the other prisoners, and it wears on all of them. Jun, so unable to withstand insult, takes it worst of all. 

“We should have done worse to them than just take their precious powers away,” Jun says in a low voice when she sees Cai Su Feng pushing around Siku. Siku is harmless; a small-boned woman who worked in the factory that constructed the planes. Cai Su is an Earthbender and a particular bully; not just of the Equalists, but of every prisoner weaker than himself. 

“What do you mean?” Tash asks.

“You know what I mean,” Jun answers, and Tash is afraid that she does. If the revolution continues without Amon—and it will, given time to forget his betrayal—they will have no way to safely defang the benders. 

“Not all of them are like him,” she says finally. “Many of them are good people; only our enemies by an accident of birth. If they’d been one of us, they might have been on our side. Do you really think they should die because of chance?”

“When did you get so sentimental?” Jun asks. “If they were really good people they wouldn’t have fought against us.”

“It’s not sentimentality,” Tash says, but it comes out snappy. “If you don’t understand your enemy you can’t fight against them.” But her voice is defensive, and since when did she have anything to be defensive about? Who has been more loyal than she? Who has given more to their cause?

 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

“What are you going to do when you get out of here?” Jun asks, over a bland lunch of rice and boiled vegetables.

Tash isn’t sure. She was only ever convicted of vandalism and resisting arrest, so she’ll be free long before most of her fellow soldiers. She could have been sentenced to a much longer period, but she’d never faced charges for Rintaro’s kidnapping. 

That had surprised her, in the beginning. She hadn’t expected any affection to carry over, after he found out that she’d lied to him and used him. But she has since grown accustomed to the fact that he’s always trying to protect her.

She can’t much blame him. If she had any power, if she weren’t locked up, she’d probably try to protect him, too. She’s finding there’s a lot of time for introspection in prison, and she never had much capacity for self-delusion.

She can’t find the energy to pretend she doesn’t care for him, as well.

“I don’t know,” she tells Jun. “Maybe visit my parents.” Her parents were deeply confused by the intensity of their daughter’s political beliefs. They hadn’t understood when she left to study chi-blocking. These last couple years she’s barely communicated with them.

“Maybe marry that cop,” Jun says mildly.

Tash looks at her, eyes narrowed. “Well, that would be my business, wouldn’t it?” 

“It’s everyone’s business if you choose your Earthbender over our cause. Have you forgotten why we’re here?”

Tash examines her nails, wishes for some polish. Her breathing is very even. The angrier she gets, the calmer she seems. Rintaro knows this. Tash can’t remember if Jun doesn’t, or if she’s so stupid she’s forgotten. “No one has been more loyal than I have,” she says, “No one fought harder.”

Good, Jun thinks. She had hoped Tash would be angry. People who have grown soft in love are of no use to her. “So you still believe in Equality,” she says.

“Always,” Tash says, and the truth in her voice is burning. You could cut your throat on that kind of conviction. “I will not give up until the day what matters is what we make of ourselves and not what we were made.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” Jun says, “Because we do not need burned-out once-believers. We need true soldiers for the coming war.”

This is the first thing that makes Tash pause. Because Jun does not say ‘soldiers’ and ‘war’ like she means the words figuratively. Jun has a fire in her eyes that prison has not quenched. But for the first time Tash sees it not as belief, not as passion, but fanaticism. Extremism. She sees the light in Jun’s eyes and it makes her afraid.

Jun tells her the plan, and Tash, Spirits help her, does not tell her that it is madness. That people will die, and they don’t deserve it. That the Equalists can still win back the heart of the people, but not with more violence. 

Tash looks into Jun’s eyes, and sees that they are beyond the time of reasonable words.

Does Jun think Tash has not noticed the three Equalists sitting casually at the next table? They’re chi-blockers she recognizes but barely knows; she knows they’re still loyal to Jun, who used to be their commanding officer.

Tash is good, at what she does, but not good enough to hold off against four of her own. Emi Morioka carries a long shard of glass wrapped in cloth. If she fights, perhaps even does so little as disagree, Tash suspects she’ll be gutted like a fish.

Tash was trained to be a liar and she once did a terrible thing to a man she cared about. Even when she was one of the Equalists’ top fighters, commended by Amon himself, this is what she was known for: Tash made a man love her, and then she left him powerless on the smooth gray stones of Bei Fong Square. 

So if Tash will only ever be remembered as a scorpion foolishly held too close to the heart, at least this time it will be for the right betrayal. 

“How can I help?” she asks.

 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

“I needed to talk with you,” Tash says.

“There are easier ways,” Rintaro says, looking between the iron bars to see the bruise blossoming on her cheek. She’d hit a guard and gotten herself thrown in solitary. Jiang had sent word to Rintaro immediately—he’d long ago bribed him with favors to call him if she got in trouble. 

“It needed to be soon.” 

“What’s so important?” he asks.

“There are a lot of Equalists here,” she says. “We all talk to each other. I hear things.”

He doesn’t say anything for a moment, just watches her eyes, uncharacteristically scared. “What are you saying?” he asks finally.

“I believe my cause,” she says, like it’s important he knows that first. “I would never betray it, but there are people that –,” she stops. “They’re so angry,” she says finally. There’s a note of pleading in her voice. A note of heartbreak. “They think that they can get what they want with violence. They don’t see that that only hurts us.”

“What are you telling me?” he asks again. He needs her to say it out loud. 

“The Equalists have organized. There’s going to be a breakout attempt. It might even work, it is a good plan.” She’d underestimated Jun, who does have a bit of an eye for tactics. For recognizing weakness, anyways. “But either way, people will die if you don’t stop it.”

“Thank you,” he says heavily. He has some idea of what it costs her.

 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

The next morning no one is let out of their cells. An army of guards and police officers descends and searches each cell down to the stone walls. In the cells of the known Equalists, they find dozens of knives, the ingredients to start fires, and a library’s worth of notes in a code that Tash offers to break for them.

“You can’t leave her here,” Rintaro tells the warden. Secrets have a tendency of getting out; confidential informants rarely remain confidential for long. 

Tash gets regular visits from a uniformed police officer, and someone tipped of the police right after Tash was informed of the plot. Someone will make the connection, and soon.

“Where are we going to put her?” the warden says tiredly. “This is the only prison in the city.” 

Rintaro lays his hands down flat on his desk. “Figure it out,” he says, anger heavy in his voice. 

“She’s in solitary,” the warden reminds him. “Safe as houses. That’s the best I can do, Officer Bai Tian.”

Rintaro gets kicked out of the office a few minutes later, professional courtesy and personal gratitude extending only so far, apparently. He suspects that Chief Bei Fong is about to get a telegram about her insubordinate subordinate. He’s not concerned; it would hardly be the first time.

On his way out, he waylays Jiang. “Look after her,” he asks.

“You’re running out of favors,” the guard says, and Rintaro grins wanly, knowing he has long ago moved into the realm of credit.

“I know,” he says. “Just this last time, I swear.” And something about his tone must convince him, because Jiang just nods tersely. 

On the way back to his home, the room in the tall white building next to the canal, he stops by the public library and finds the law scrolls. “You can’t take those with you,” the librarian says, a grim-faced woman wearing red robes. 

“I’m a police officer,” he says, and shows her his badge. She frowns more deeply, but through loud, lengthy argumentation and select outright lies, he finally receives her begrudging permission to take them. 

Rintaro reads them between his shifts. They’re dense tomes filled with twisting sentences polysyllabic, antiquated words. He agonizes over the complexity, wishes he’d spent more time as a child studying instead of training. But he has a purpose, and it helps him find the patience to keep on, even when his head aches and his vision swims. Rintaro’s lodgings always had the careless disarray of a bachelor, but now they become littered with bits of paper and hastily scribbled notes. 

But the sweetness when he finds an answer makes it all worth it.

He allows himself a slow, savage grin, and then gathers his things and papers to go to the clerk’s office in the Council building to obtain copies of the necessary forms. He knows a girl that works there, and it costs him only a smile to get them instantly in hand, instead of having to go to the back of the line. From the Council headquarters, it’s only a short trolley ride to the station.

Rintaro ignores the ‘hello’s and odd looks he gets on the way in—he is here on his day off, and not in uniform. Instead, he heads straight to the Chief’s office in the back. He walks in without knocking and tosses the paperwork onto her desk. “Work release,” he says. 

The Chief gives them a cursory glance, then leans back in her chair, giving him a weighed look. “That’s not exactly a small favor,” she says.

“She saved lives. She deserves better than exile or death.” He doesn’t want to have her shipped out of the city she was born in, the only home she has ever known. 

“Good point,” the Chief says. “Give me another.”

“We need more non-bending officers. The Equalists proved that with chi-blockers and technology they are capable of handling bending criminals. That means less property damage and a better relationship with the populace.”

“Chi-blockers,” she says dismissively, “they’ve always been rare.”

“They don’t have to be. The police academy offers Earthbending training,” he points out. “We could to the same for chi-blocking. She could teach them.”

“Your arguments are sound,” the Chief says. “But I need to know why you think we can trust her.”

“I know her,” he says. “She only ever did what she thought was right. Protecting innocent people, going after those that abuse their power, that’s right up her alley. We can trust her because she never betrayed her principles. She never hurt a non-combatant, she never looked for her own gain. And we will be right with her, we will watch her every move.”

Lin thinks about it. The kid can be dense as stone, but he has a good heart. The girl fights like she was born to it and she turned in her own people to save the lives of the men and women who imprisoned her. “Fine,” she says, and Rintaro blinks, startled that she was convinced so easily. “But it’s on your head, so you better hope you aren’t wrong about her Office Bai Tian,” she adds.

“I’m not,” he promises. Not this time.

 

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Tash laughs when he tells her what he has in mind. “You think I could be a cop?” she asks.

“I think you could be a great one,” he tells her, and she stops smiling, taken aback by his sincerity. 

“It couldn’t ever be,” she says, shaking her head. “It’s a fantasy. I’m locked up, they would never take me.” Silently, Rintaro shows her the paperwork that proves otherwise. All that’s needed to make it official is for her to write her name in red ink. “Well, they’d never accept me. I’d never really be one of them,” she argues.

“Do you really need them to?” Rintaro asks. “If you still want to fight for your revolution,” he continues, leading her to glare at him in response. Of course she still wants to fight for the revolution. She gave up everything for it, it is nearly the only thing she has left. “—maybe this is how you do it,” he says. “If they won’t give you respect you demand it. If they believe non-benders can’t do the job you prove them wrong. If they think that because you’re an Equalist you can’t be trusted, you show them the strength of your character.”

Something flickers in her eyes. “You want me to join the people I fought against. Be branded a traitor, operate in the system that perpetuates oppression.”

“Work to change it from within. Give the world an example.” Rintaro doesn’t try to tempt her with freedom, for all that he knows she wants it. Tash will do something because it is right or she will not do it at all. “Don’t you want to show the world how the police should be? Do something to make the world better instead of just sitting in a cell and thinking about it?”

Tash stares at him. “Why are you doing this?” she asks.

“Because I believe in you,” he answers. “Because you can be more than a petty criminal, Tash. Because I believe a woman like you can change the world.”

She’s silent for a long moment. “You believe it needs to be changed?” she asks, head tilted, eyes guarded.

He covers her hand with his own, and looks her straight in the eyes, so she knows he isn’t lying. “Maybe you didn’t go about it in the right way,” he says. “But you do have a cause worth fighting for.”

She smiles, bright and surprised. “Are you trying to manipulate me?” she asks. She can feel—oh foolish thing—she can feel tears rise in her eyes. What is this, some kind of punishment? Do the Spirits think she needs to know how it feels to be played? To have the tiniest shred of her hope crushed underfoot?

“No,” he says. And Tash—Tash cannot smell a lie. Tash looks up at him and she trusts him with her whole stupid heart. Rintaro would not lead her astray, he would never do a thing to harm her. 

So she writes her name in red ink, takes his hands in hers, and knows she can promise the same for him.


End file.
